I've been leery about eating many veggies, but when I looked up some of them in a food counts book I noticed that the fibre count is sometimes higher than the carb count. For example, celery lists as 5 carbs, but then the fibre lists as 6. This seemed to be true even with broccoli, etc. Even the counts for tomatoes were close to even. Do you subtract the fibre count from the carbs? Wouldn't that leave a negative balance which would be a good thing? Or leave many vegetables with a very low carb count? I remember hearing years ago that some raw vegetables actually take more energy to digest than they contain ... would that be true in a low-carb way as well?

What book are you checking for those numbers? I just checked the USDA database, and the numbers are quite different.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl

Wa'il

The counts you listed sound way, way off for some reason. What food counts book are you using, just out of curiosity??

All vegetables contain digestible carbohydrates over and above the fiber content. Even raw bran has some extra carbs beyond its fiber content! It's possible that your book has already subtracted the fiber from the TOTAL carbs. So, for the celery example, the fiber is 6 gms, remaining digestible carb is 5 gms for a TOTAL carb count of 11 grams. Perhaps there's an index, or maybe in the front pages / introduction of the book, the author explains how the values are calculated.

One way to estimate the true carb content, is to look at the number of calories listed for the food. From that figure, subtract the calories of protein (4 calories per gm), then subtract calories of fat (9 cal. per gm). The remainder is the number of calories contributed by digestible carbohydrate. Divide that by 4, voila, you have the grams of carb in the food. Fiber won't be included in the calories, because it isn't digested.

Corrine Netzer's "the Complete Book of Food Counts" is excellent and accurate, and includes listings for thousands of foods, including brand names and fast food restaurants. The 2000 edition is $10 Cdn, paperback.

Also, the USDA on-line site is excellent, Wa'il has given the link above.

For the record, one stalk of celery has 6 calories, 0.3 gm protein, 1.5 gm carbs, 0.1 gm fat and 0.7 gm fiber.

hope this helps ..

Doreen

Well, guess I should pick up the other book. I just got this one at Overwaitea, it is called The Carbohydrate, Fiber, and Sugar Counter by Annette B. Natow (1999). It doesn't list the protein. It lists celery as 1 stalk, 6 cals., 1 carb., 1 fibre.; 1/2 cup raw brocolli as 12 cals., 2 carbs., 1 fibre or 1 Dole spear as 40 cals., 4 carbs. and 5 fibre. So the counts seemed to almost knock each other out. Couldn't see anything in the intro to explain her method of calculating, although she does seem to promote a high-carb, low-fat way of eating.

I can understand the theory about the sugar, grains, and dairy; and I can see the difference eliminating them makes for me. I just find it strange that these kinds of cruciferous veggies would still need to be limited.

Anyway, thanks for your input! I shall try to find the other book, and/or use the online listing.

Sue,
the Natow book is right but it does do some things that are a bit 'fuzzy' from our Canadian perspective:
a) it rounds grams (1.49 is listed as 1, 0.5 is listed as 1g) of carbs, legal in American labelling whereas Canadian labelling requires 10ths of a gram accuracy).
b) it does *not* list total carbs and then fiber like we're used to, it's *already* subtracted so you get figures for fiber carbs and non-fiber carbs.

So you can use the book if you want to (if you don't mind the rounding), just use the carbs numbers alone.

PS: if you're on Atkins or PP, you don't need to keep away from vegetables, just be sure you count the carbs and note if you have any sensitivity. Check that Induction list again and you will see there's LOTS of veggies, just need to count the carbs at all times.

Hope this helps!

Okay, gotcha ... now I understand what she did. Seems like kind of a silly way to list the fibre, don't you think? A lot of plans like Atkins and the Zone tell you to subtract the fibre from the carbs. And rounding off the carb count could lead to lots of errors. Too bad they didn't have the other one there, I shall keep my eye open for it.

Thanks again.